The challenges:
- To reduce the cost of the department.
- To increase efficiencies and increase staff capacity for value-add departmental tasks.
- To address the patient backlog accrued during the pandemic.
The technical solution:
- Procured Blue Prism and built-up own Trust-wide in-house automation team over time.
Processes automated using RPA:
- Pre-populating pharmacy prescription lists, semi-automated RAS triage process
- Booking patients into clinics, clinically validate ‘on hold’ follow-up clinic appointments
- Auto-check for DNAs in outpatient clinics and alerting staff by email after two occurrences
- Escalates two week wait cancer referrals if approaching target dates by emailing nominated staff member(s)
- Uploading patient details to national cancer register
- Auto-checks and books patients waiting for diagnostic procedures
- ‘Scrapes’ pre-defined data from ERS to populate the Patient Tracking List
- Prioritisation of backlog waiting lists through auto-search for key words using optical character recognition.
Benefits:
- Achieve 90% outpatient clinical fill level overall
- Achieve 95% new patient slot booking from ERS
- Assurance of many routine tasks as automation eliminates human error.
- Significant savings in replacing high churn roles which heavily featured repetitive administrative tasks
- Significant savings in replacing other roles where staff are redeployed into other vacancies.
Other points to note:
- Initial investment was paid back in 24 months through jobs no longer required.
Contact for further information
- Peter Coutts, Deputy Divisional Director, Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Email: peter.coutts@nhs.net
This case study is one in a series exploring the use of RPA in various NHS settings. It forms part of a guide produced by the West of England AHSN sharing our learning around RPA.
Read the full guide online here or download the guide as a PDF here.
